Daoist Identity

by Livia Kohn

  The Daoist pudu, or ritual of “universal salvation,” is often held up as a case of syncretism, a Daoist imitation of the Esoteric Buddhist fang yankou, or “release of the flaming mouths,” in which the ritual elements of both traditions have been blended. The ritual has received relatively little and superficial analysis.1 Indeed, the scholarship on these rituals can be seen as emblematic of the approach that many analyses of Chinese religion have taken. Like the pudu, Chinese religion has of-213

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  ten been and continues to be characterized as a mixture, a pragmatic concoction, a melange, a hybrid, or a syncretic blend of religions.

  Just what do we mean when we say that something is “syncretic”?

  In its simplest form, syncretism presupposes that two hitherto distinct religions, rituals, or what have you become mixed together, and that if circumstances were changed, the mixture would naturally separate.

  The conglomeration is unnatural, a kind of miscegenation. Carston Colpe has attempted to provide a more precise and, therefore, more analytically useful definition in his article “Syncretism.” But Colpe concludes, “All that can be done is to point out constellations in the general history of religions that have made possible what historians may, under certain conditions, call ‘syncretism’” (1987, 220a). To label a religion “syncretic” or “hybrid” (even with a hyphen, as in the term Buddho-Daoist) implies that there are two sorts of religions: the pure-bred and the bastard. But since all culture and religion are constituted in a continual process of encounter and mixture, to go on using such terms seems to me counterproductive, and the politics of this are more than a little problematic.2 This is not to say that some Chinese did not regard certain forms of religious and cultural interaction as miscegenation. Many, including the famous cleric Huiyuan, did.3 But we are not playing the same game as they are, and we should try to dis-entangle their prejudices from our prejudices. At best, the language of mixture, even when couched in the technical-sounding terminology of syncretism, is sloppy and analytically useless. At worst, it is bi-ased and pernicious. Recent work on metaphor and translation offer a more nuanced approach to the problem of religious identity. As I see it, the pudu is a Daoist translation of the Esoteric Buddhist fang yankou ritual, and Daoists who perform it in no way confuse the two traditions.4

  Ritual and Translation

  Translation theory is not, of course, alien to the Chinese situation. The theory of “matching” or “extending” meanings ( geyi ) was articulated as a method of translating Buddhist technical vocabularies in the early Six Dynasties.5 Geyi brought together indigenous Chinese terms and notions from the Daode jing, the Zhuangzi, and the Yijing as analogues in the service of communicating South Asian Buddhist ideas. Although geyi supposedly ended as a technique of translating with the advent of Kumarajiva in the early fifth century, the hermeneutic reality of using

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  Chinese culture to communicate Buddhist notions did not abate; rather, it became more sophisticated, and I have argued elsewhere that it reached a very advanced state in the work of the Esoteric acarya s (masters) of the Tang court, especially Amoghavajra and his immediate Chinese disciples (Orzech 1998, 169–174).6

  In contrast to the simplistic and misleading rhetoric of syncretism, theories of translation not only articulate that things come together but also afford a way to articulate how things come together, following the trail from initial encounter to forms of mutual accommodation, borrowing, or transformative development.7 In short, recent work on translation and metaphor afford us a more nuanced approach to the complexities inherent in the construction of religious identity.

  In a fascinating essay on the use of Hindu metaphors and terminology in early Bengali Muslim literature, Tony K. Stewart observes, Religious encounter seen as translation . . . is not just an act of utterance followed by the emotional, political, and ideological conflict of conversion, but ultimately reveals a movement of accommodation by the receiving or target language and the culture it represents, which when sufficiently pursued eventually becomes an act of appropriation. The target language incorporates fully the new terms and concepts that result from this encounter, a process which is patently different from syncretism. The act of incorporating what is alien ultimately changes its host . . . (2001, 276)8

  Moreover, “when the ‘translation’ is successful, the new term becomes a part of the target culture’s extended religious vocabulary, and carries with it, or at least points to, another conceptual world” (2001, 276).

  Stewart demonstrates that the Hindu terminology and conceptions present in early Bengali Muslim texts does not reflect an ad hoc mixture. Rather, these texts are witness to a process of religious encounter in which new Muslim identities were constructed by a careful appropriation of indigenous religious concepts and vocabulary. In laying out his argument, Stewart presents a typology of translation theories that, for the sake of convenience, I will summarize here. He terms these

  “formal equivalence,” “refracted equivalence,” “dynamic equivalence,”

  and “metaphoric equivalence.” “Formal equivalence” involves a one-to-one match of terms and is, for all intents and purposes, an ideal.

  Even when it occurs, immediate clarification is needed. Indeed, early translation “committees” attempting to render Sanskrit and Pali in Classical Chinese often produced a wooden or literal word-for-word

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  rendition that then served as the basis for a cleaned-up, more palat-able end product. No one assumed the literal version was an end in itself.

  “Refracted equivalence” offers us a more down-to-earth picture of what goes on in translation. André LeFevre conceptualizes translation metaphorically as a “mirror” reflection of the original, but the “glass”

  of the “mirror” not only reflects but also refracts or distorts (LeFevre 1982, 3–19; 1975). For instance, an author might equate such high-level terms as “bodhi” and “Dao,” often knowing full well that while they can play vaguely similar roles in Buddhism and Daoism (to attain bodhi, to attain the Dao), they are not the same. Having discovered the inevitable “refraction,” we are still afforded little analytic leverage with regard to the distortion in question. The “dynamic equivalence” theory propounded by Eugene Nida (1964; 1969) and theories of “intersemiotic” or “metaphoric equivalence,” as articulated by Stewart and inspired by the work of Jakobson (1971) and Johnson and Lakoff (1980; 1999) are more useful.9

  By emphasizing how a term functions in its new social and linguistic universe, Nida shifts the focus away from equivalence to the con-tours and deployment of the distortion caused by translation. Nida sees the translator’s choice of terms as part of a wider strategy that takes into account parallel functions of the terms in their own social and textual context. For example, when the Tang dynasty Esoteric master Amoghavajra praised emperor Daizong as a mingwang (Skr. vidyaraja), it is unlikely that he meant that Daizong was a vidyaraja in the same sense that Acala (Budong) is, and he would not bother to invoke Daizong in ritual as he did invoke Acala. Rather, in his capacity as “protector of the Law,” Daizong functions like a vidyaraja. Thus, in a letter written by Amoghavajra to Daizong thanking him for a gift of incense, we read,

  Already you have showered me with gifts. When can I ever repay you?

  It is proper that I reverently bathe the statues at the appointed times and that I perform the homa rites at the half moon in order that the thirty-seven worthies [of the Vajradhatu mandala] may protect the state of the brilliant king and that the sixteen protectors might augment the awesome spirit of the sage thearch, so that you may live as long as the southern mountain, eternally, without limit. [827c24–828a24]

  As is evident in his correspondence with Daizong, Amoghavajra’s use of the term “mingwang” expanded previous Chinese use of the phrase “brilliant king” found in the Confucian classics like the Gr
eat

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  Learning, for now a “brilliant king” finds his proper role in protecting the Dharma. Conversely, the equation mingwang = vidyaraja changes the semantic scope of mingwang in its Buddhist setting by adding to it connotations involving the Chinese ideology of the sage-king. In their correspondence, Amoghavajra and Daizong deployed the term “mingwang” dynamically to suit particular contexts (Orzech 1998, 191–198).

  There is no need to assume that either man “converted.” Indeed, it is important to note that such a dynamic translation makes it possible —

  even probable and strategically desirable —for two participants to understand the equivalence differently, deliberately construing the term to suit the immediate context (Sangren 1987, 185; Orzech 1998, 95, 99–107).10

  When key terms of a religious ideology are brought into play, the interaction often goes beyond the limited mapping of one term to another. Each term carries with it a broad range of metaphorical “entailments” and coordinate terms that can also be mapped. In other words, sophisticated translators may deliberately bring entire alien metaphorical complexes into play and through careful choice enrich both worlds. Stewart calls this “metaphoric equivalence.” One extended and elaborate example of this strategy involves the fifth-century Renwang jing, which I have explored elsewhere (Orzech 1989; 1998). In that scripture the translation of the Buddhist “kings of for-bearance” ( renwang a) by the Confucian “humane kings” ( renwang b) becomes the starting point for a comprehensive engagement of Confucian and Buddhist religious worlds and the emergence of a new religious identity: Chinese Buddhist (1989, 17–24; 1998, 99–107).

  George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work on metaphor throws considerable light on such broader mapping. During the last quarter of a century, Johnson, Lakoff, and their students have carried out a systematic exploration of how metaphoric mappings between a source domain and a target domain are fundamental to our ability to think complex thoughts (1980; 1999).11 According to Johnson and Lakoff, metaphor involves more than mere linguistic equivalence. Rather, metaphor is the basis of thought itself. It begins in early childhood as sensory-motor development is mapped onto judgments to produce a fund of largely unconscious “primary” metaphors. Examples include more is up, similarity is closeness, states are locations, and so on (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 48–56).12 Later, this primary act of translation from one domain to another is extended in new ways. For instance, in referring to the common contemporary metaphor love is a journey, Lakoff explains,

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  The metaphor involves understanding one domain of experience, love, in terms of another domain of experience, journeys. More technically, the metaphor can be understood as a mapping (in the mathematical sense) from a source domain (in this case, journeys) to a target domain (in this case, love). The mapping is tightly structured. There are onto-logical correspondences, according to which entities in the domain of love (e.g. the lovers, their common goals, their difficulties, the love relationship) correspond systematically to entities in the domain of a journey (the travelers, the vehicle, destinations, etc.). (Lakoff 1993, 207) Metaphor is, in effect, a form of translation, and it gives us a way to articulate what takes place in cultural encounter. In such encounters we can often see an entire source and target complex from one culture being mapped onto a source and target complex in another culture. For instance, in Buddhism, acts are “seeds,” and the consequences of acts are referred to as “fruit” (morality as agriculture). An agricultural metaphor has been mapped onto a moral domain. Thus, through karma and reincarnation, one “reaps” reward in heaven or suffering in hell. Buddhism’s most far-reaching contribution to Chinese religion may have been its notion of individual karmic retribution that in some arenas displaced indigenous corporate theories of retribution (such as chengfu). But the translation of this South Asian metaphoric complex was itself appropriated and transformed by Chinese metaphors involving morality and bureaucracy. Just as this world is governed bureaucratically, so too are heaven and hell (cosmos as bureaucracy). Thus there are “magistrates” arrayed in various “courts”

  with “secretaries” who must handle the paperwork. Just as in a yamen, protocol must be followed and justice must be meted out as punishment. Indeed, the central role of documents in Daoism and the very notion of “registers” ( lu) attests to the pervasive structuring power of this metaphor.13 In this “metaphoric equivalence” we find more than mere borrowing, the translation of one term by another, or even the enrichment of one vocabulary by another. We have, instead, two complex metaphoric worlds rendering, reflecting, and expanding one another in an intersemiotic pas de deux. An entire metaphoric world (and its subcomplexes and entailments) has been mapped onto another metaphoric world, which is in turn transformed by this new mapping.14

  The Fang Yankou and the Pudu

  Ever since ethnographers and historians of religion began to describe the ritual life of the Chinese, the complex of “ghost rituals” has been

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  a primary exhibit for the syncretic character of Chinese religion. Indeed, if we examine performances by Buddhists and Daoists during the ghost festival, we find striking similarities. A five-pointed crown is worn by the Daoist during the pudu, and a similarly patterned five-pointed crown is worn by the Buddhists in performing the fang yankou.

  Both Daoists and Buddhists use “vajra-handled” bells, both employ

  “mudras” ( yin), and both chant “mantras” ( zhenyan; shenzhou). Scholars of Daoism such as Duane Pang and Michael Saso point out the

  “Buddhist-inspired” elements of the ritual while they note that the

  “essence” of the performance is Daoist (Pang 1977, 98–99). John Lagerwey also repeatedly notes the Buddhist influence on the hell-busting rituals deriving from the Lingbao corpus. Yet little has been done to articulate just what role the Buddhist material plays in the Daoist ritual. One is left with the distinct impression that we are witnessing some sort of ad hoc ruse, a religious fraud perpetrated solely in the interest of market share. As Lagerwey observed,

  Taoists who do such services have to compete with Buddhists for clients, for Buddhists traditionally have done and still do both Rituals of Merit and of Universal Salvation. Indeed, important elements in these Taoist rituals are clearly of Buddhist origin, the paintings of the ten hells which line the side walls of the altar during these rituals, for example, and the dates after death in which the Ritual of Merit should be done. There is considerable overlap between Buddhist and Taoist Rituals of Merit, more even, at least in Taiwan, than De Groot’s essay on “Buddhist Masses for the Dead at Amoy” (1884) would suggest. The only real difference, a Taoist priest once told me, is that the Buddhists bring the soul to a paradise in the west, the Taoists to one in the east!

  And even this distinction would seem to be contradicted by the soul-banner inscription used by Master Ch’en which places paradise in the west. (Lagerwey 1987, 172)

  But as the anthropologist A. M. Hocart once cautioned, we would do well to proceed with caution when evaluating statements by native in-formants (1973, 46). Perhaps something more than ad hoc attempts to garner market share is going on here; perhaps the borrowing reflects a sophisticated encounter between two ritual systems, a translation that is dynamic, metaphoric, and intersemiotic. Maybe we are missing something important concerning the construction of Daoist religious identity.

  So let us look more closely at these apparently “identical” rituals.

  For the purposes of this chapter, I will limit my examination of pudu ritual to the manual contained in fascicles 60–62 of the Lingbao lingjiao

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  jidu jinshu titled Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi (HY 466), the description by Duane Pang of a pudu in Honolulu based on a related manual, my own observations of pudu at the conclusion of a jiao in Lam-tsuen Valley in the
New Territories of Hong Kong in 1981 and one performed during the “ghost festival” the same year, and the brief manual Lingbao dalian neizhi xingchi jiyao (HY 407), translated by Judith Boltz (1983). I will also be drawing on my own previous work on the fang yankou (particularly of T. 1320 Yuqie jiyao yankou shishi yi

  [Orzech 1989; 1994]). I will proceed by noting some general similarities and then lay out the ritual programs in some detail.

  Generally speaking, the similarities between the Daoist pudu and the Buddhist fang yankou may be outlined as follows: 1. Material details, that is, Taoist use of “vajras,” five pointed

  “crown,” etc.15

  2. Similarities involving terminology and ideas (vajra, karma, sweet dew, ghosts).

  3. The use of “Brahma-language.”

  4. The use of “mantras” and “mudras.”

  5. Complex metaphorical similarities in overall ritual structure or conception.

  These do not exhaust the similarities, but they will do for a start. The Daoist Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi, like other Lingbao texts, shows considerable influence from Buddhism both in terminology and in its overall program. As I noted above, Erik Zürcher and Stephen Bokenkamp have examined borrowings of Buddhist vocabulary in the Lingbao corpus and the complex of ideas surrounding Brahma-language.

  Each of these would take considerable time to unpack, so instead I will focus here on the key terms on which the broader metaphoric mapping depends.16